Alex Jones Gets His Own Legislation

To show you just how deeply the Republican party has mainstreamed the crazy, there is now a bill in Congress based on the idiotic and immediately debunked conspiracy theory that the government is buying up all the ammunition to keep people from being able to buy it for their own guns.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Congressman Frank Lucas (R-OK-3) today introduced in their respective chambers the Ammunition Management for More Obtainability (AMMO) Act of 2013. The legislation would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a report on the purchasing of ammunition by federal agencies, except the Department of Defense, and its effect on the supply of ammunition available to the public. The AMMO Act would restrict agencies from obtaining additional ammunition for a six-month period if current agency stockpiles are higher than its monthly averages prior to the Obama Administration.

“President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” said Inhofe. “One way the Obama Administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition. As the public learned in a House committee hearing this week, the Department of Homeland Security has two years worth of ammo on hand and allots nearly 1,000 more rounds of ammunition for DHS officers than is used on average by our Army officers. The AMMO Act of 2013 will enforce transparency and accountability of federal agencies’ ammunition supply while also protecting law-abiding citizens access to these resources.”

“After hearing from my constituents about the shortage of ammunition in Oklahoma and the Department of Homeland Security’s profligate purchases of ammunition,” said Lucas. “We have introduced the AMMO Act of 2013 to curtail these purchases so Americans can exercise their Second Amendment rights without being encumbered by the federal government. I was surprised to find out the DHS has the right to buy up to 750 million rounds of ammunition over the next five years, while it already has two years worth of ammo already. This is an issue that must be addressed, and I am pleased this legislation provides us the opportunity to do so.”

The AMMO act. Get it? Do you get it? Isn’t that clever? Inhofe is, of course, one of the dumbest people in the Senate. He’s the GOP’s go-to guy on climate change denial. And this claim about ammunition is so batshit crazy that even the NRA has debunked it. Hell, even Breitbart has debunked it. When you’re making claims about this issue that even the NRA and the wingnuts at Breitbart condemn as false and hysterical, you’re either a liar or you’re simply delusional.

I hope I’m living when a radical, lesbian black — and I mean the deepest pit of a coal mine BLACK — woman is elected president. If they go this apeshit over a half-black, center-right man who wouldn’t have been out of place politically in the Nixon administration, for fuck’s sake, just think how interesting it will be for four or eight years with the woman I described in the White House?

Of course, by the time that happens the wingnuts’ numbers will be very low, to the point that they only come out of their underground, bullet- and gold-stocked bunkers, where they listen to replays of Beck and Limbaugh all day, to pick up their Social Security checks and monthly trips to Walmart.

jnorris

Great campaign slogan for his next election: Inhofe Disarms Police!

mobius

Inhofe. One of my senators.

[headdesk] [headdesk] [headdesk]

eamick

In my experience, the stupidity of a bill is proportional to at least the cube of the awkwardness of the acronym.

shouldbeworking

Why isn’t the nut bar interested in the ammunition purchases of DoD? Is it because the military and Posse Comitatus?

If Obama is as bad as, or worse than, the nut bars say, they should be worried about the people with tanks and submarines. Just think what a sub could do to the 1%’s yachts!

My sincere wish is that the next president is a an atheist lesbian daughter of illegal immigrants. The number of reenactments of the head exploding scene from scanners would be priceless.

shouldbeworking:

The reason why they’re exempting the military is because they sincerely believe that when the revolution comes, the military will side with them in the overthrow of the Kenyan Usurper(tm).

Artor

I’m confused. Much of the DHS ammo is going to local police departments and border patrols. I thought those were some of the Teabagger’s favorite things, but now it seems they want to disarm them. Why are the Teabaggers soft on crime now? Why do they hate America?

CaitieCat

If they go this apeshit over a half-black, center-right man

Y’know…there’s something a little squicky* about defining a man’s race for him, especially in a way we’ve not heard him use about himself. Also, what’s “half-black” mean, anyway? One absolutely pure African parent, and one absolutely pure white parent? Are Caucasians white enough for this kind of white? Italians? Egyptians? Ricardo Montalban?

It seems to me based on an admittedly quick Google that he generally identifies as African-American – are we really okay with saying he’s wrong about who he is, especially just to score a point off people who’d hate him no matter what word he used?

* And when I say “a little squicky”, it’s because people react so awfully to the word “racist”, even when applied to just their behaviour.

an atheist, feminist, FtM, 3rd gender, queer member of La Raza who is the child of illegal immigrants. If we want to have them talking about destroying gender roles, lets give them someone who actually wants to destroy gender roles. If we want to talk about racism in this country, let’s not elect someone who desperately wants to avoid talking about race.

Of course, you’re right that if we want to talk about whether faith is a better basis for decisions than evidence of the actual world around us, and if we want to talk about justice in immigration & how the system serves and doesn’t serve immigrants and those born within the borders lets elect that person.

I wish I could remember that word Ed coined – something about unhingeability. I can’t remember what it is, but I’m certain I’d like to use it here to describe what I’d love to expose in important political actors… Mostly on the right wing. Although there are plenty of unhinged folks on the left, they tend not to be in positions of as much power and influence as, say, Gohmert.

Also, what’s “half-black” mean, anyway? ….It seems to me based on an admittedly quick Google that he generally identifies as African-American – are we really okay with saying he’s wrong about who he is, especially just to score a point off people who’d hate him no matter what word he used?

Heh. I’m again reminded of a racist troll my readers and I roasted years ago. We asked him to define “black” and “white” in any sort of objectively testable manner. Naturally, he wiffled and waffled in response. At one point we asked for genetics-based evidence for his confused racial theory and he pulled out a comparative IQ test that defined race based on the test subjects’ self-identification. Two words that immediately sprang to my mind: “social construct.”

Ichthyic

… the AMMO act??

ROFLMAO

what a bunch of numpties.

Ichthyic

. We asked him to define “black” and “white” in any sort of objectively testable manner. Naturally, he wiffled and waffled in response. At one point we asked for genetics-based evidence for his confused racial theory and he pulled out a comparative IQ test that defined race based on the test subjects’ self-identification. Two words that immediately sprang to my mind: “social construct.”

this is correct; the entire issue of race is a social construct. Genetically identifiable traits are existent and expressed in all human populations, such that the variablity within them is equally great to the variability between them.

but an interesting thing happens then…

the legal definition of a protected group under the civil rights act must be redefined as being dependent on the acts and behavior of those intending to discriminate, instead of a strictly identifiable group that is being discriminated against.

IOW, as others have pointed out, the very nature of a bill such as this one, which would identify specific sexually orientation as a legitimate target of discrimination, are now exactly HOW one defines discrimination to begin with.

In essence, they are indeed doing all the work of including sexual orientation as a discriminated class, by their own definition, and thus there no longer is any need to add LGBT individuals as a specific identifiable group to be warranted protection under the civil rights act.

These people have own-goaled their way into the future!

Ichthyic

….er, that reference to the “bill such as this one” was actually to the other thread about the bill being introduced in WA to allow discrimination against LGBT based on religious beliefs.

dan4

Uh, more ammunition can be made, so I don’t even get the premise behind the “government buying up all the ammunition so the everyday citizen can’t buy it for their guns” stupidity. Ammunition isn’t a “set amount” issue like land or something.

Wingnuts don’t understand concepts like that. They think freedom is a limited resource. That’s why they’re so afraid of expanding freedom for others.

hoku

The fun part will be how the NRA responds if this gets any traction. It comes from their exact base of people who are convinced that the government is trying to take their guns, but it directly would harm the interests of the manufacturers that are the power behind the group.

dan4

Maybe ammunition supplies wouldn’t be so running so low among the general population if people only shot their guns for legitimate reasons like self-defense or defense of others, and not for stupid yahoo crap like shooting ducks for sport.

kermit.

dan4, I don’t have statistics at hand, but I grew up in and hang out with folks in the gun culture. It is my observation that the rounds fired in criminal assaults, self-defense, hunting, and vandalism are outnumbered by at least two orders of magnitude by the ammo used up in target practice. I guarantee that the bulk of the government ammo will be used for this, by a very wide margin.